The social app that once had 500 million users is about to be shut down

Author: Lu Yao

Proofread by Yun Zhao

Not long ago, China Mobile's official website issued an announcement: The Hefei Xin service will stop providing services from September 30, 2022, and it will be impossible to log in and use Hefei Xin at that time.

Image from the Internet

Regarding how to deal with the internal personal information of Fetion users, China Mobile officially stated that it will be preserved in accordance with national laws, regulations and privacy policies, and will be deleted in batches when the preservation period expires.

Many users may have heard of Hecaiyun Cloud Disk, but as for what this "HeFetion" is, most of them have never heard of it.

But if we talk about its predecessor, many users born in the 70s, 80s, and 90s should be very familiar with it. It is actually the former communication and chat tool "Fetion".

This topic sparked heated discussions in the 51CTO technical community.

Group member [looffy]: I used it many years ago and thought it had been discontinued long ago.

Group member [Yitian]: I remember that when it was first launched, text messages were free when you bound your mobile phone. It was great. You no longer had to worry about not having enough text messages. There was only one problem: you couldn't send text messages between non-mobile phones. Later, it seemed that you could register with a non-mobile phone number. After many years, I logged in again and changed many versions. Maybe the number of users dropped sharply, and the testing volume was not enough, so there were bugs everywhere.

Group member [Liang Fei] 4G represents the rise of mobile Internet, and the function of SMS has been weakened to accepting "verification codes". It is hard to say whether the metaverse will replace WeChat in the 5G era. China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom are equivalent to the State Grid. They are providers of infrastructure services and builders and providers of information highway infrastructure. As for what cars run on it, it is beyond the control of operators.

Group member [Ahu]: It was treated as a simple communication tool and the community operation was not successful. For users, free text messages have a certain stickiness, but with the public development of the Internet, the function of text messages has been gradually weakened, and Fetion has gradually lost its market.

No one could have predicted that Fetion, once a social networking giant, would exit the market in this way. It is truly regrettable.

1. The past glory

Before the advent of smartphones, most models on the market were feature phones, and text messaging was a very important function.

If you can't understand, let me explain it from another angle. You can use text messages to get weather information, subscribe to news, check your relationship status, etc. At that time, text messages could replace most of the apps on mobile phones today.

According to the statistics on mobile SMS business volume released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the number of text messages sent by Chinese mobile phone users has been growing by hundreds of billions each year since 2006.

Source: National Bureau of Statistics

This period was also the era of transition from 2G network to 3G network. The network was not well developed and data traffic was particularly expensive, 5 yuan for 30MB per month. If we look at it today, you might use up a month's data traffic by watching a short video, reading an article, or sending a few QQ messages.

Image from the Internet

Therefore, the instant messaging capability of SMS and the price of 0.1 yuan per message make it one of the most convenient ways of social life.

So in 2007, after realizing that there was a huge demand in the market, China Mobile officially launched the comprehensive communication service "Fetion", which integrates functions such as text messaging, Internet access, and interactive voice response.

Image from the Internet

In fact, except for text messages, most of the functions had already been realized by QQ at that time, and it was more interesting than Fetion. However, in the era of feature phones, an important factor hindering the development of QQ was the expensive data charges. Most consumers were reluctant to keep QQ logged in, and often logged in to check messages every few hours, so it was difficult to receive messages in time.

Backed by China Mobile, Fetion has realized the function of sending unlimited free text messages to friends directly from a computer, web page or mobile phone. Even if the other party is not logged in to Fetion, the message will be sent directly to the system SMS.

Relying on good reputation and promotion of various activities, Fetion entered its golden period.

According to statistics from data agencies at the time, Fetion had 500 million registered users around 2010, and the number of active users during the peak period was close to 100 million. This was a very scary number in an era when the Internet was not particularly developed. Almost all mobile users had more or less come into contact with Fetion.

If everything develops in a good direction, perhaps the current "WeChat" should be "Fetion".

However, with the advent of the smartphone era, mobile Internet has entered a stage of rapid development, and the price of traffic has gradually increased from more than 20 yuan for 30MB to more than 20 yuan for 30GB.

Fetion, which is based on the feature of free text messages, will inevitably be eliminated if it does not change.

2. Start going downhill

Fetion fell to the bottom in just a few years. In addition to external factors, it also had its own problems.

For example, Fetion was initially only available between mobile users. Non-mobile users were not able to use or register for Fetion. This function was not opened until 2012.

Moreover, the free SMS service is only available to mobile users. If you send to China Unicom or China Telecom users, it is 0.01 yuan per message. If you reply to friends of other operators, it is also 0.01 yuan per message. The consequence is that after the advent of the 4G network era, the price of traffic charges has decreased, consumers are no longer sensitive to traffic, and limited free services have no advantage.

At the same time, a large number of instant messaging tools with richer functions emerged during the same period, including MiTalk, WeChat, etc.

In December 2010, Xiaomi, which had just been established, took the lead in launching MiTalk, which can be used on any mobile phone that can install the software.

Tencent also sensed this market, and about two months later, WeChat went public.

Image from the Internet

One sentence can describe it as "no grass grows wherever it goes". With Tencent's huge user base, it almost swept the instant messaging tool market at that time, including Fetion.

After WeChat went online, it continued to deepen user stickiness through interesting functions such as official accounts, shake, and drift bottles, while Fetion's functions are too simple, version updates are too slow, and there are no good derivative products.

For example, WeChat launched the video call function in 2012, but Fetion was not launched until 2013.

Coupled with the frequent problems of sending delays and lost information, it has gradually lost its appeal to users.

At the same time, the fact that a product like Fetion exists within the operator's business is also one of the reasons for its decline.

A former Fetion employee once denounced this issue.

Image source: NetEase Finance

The general meaning is that Fetion was developed by one company, operated by another company, and then promoted by operators in each province. When there is a conflict of interest, I am afraid that no party is willing to take the initiative to make Fetion a better product.

This dragged on until 2017, when Fetion was renamed "He Fetion" and transformed to target corporate office groups, which is somewhat similar to the current DingTalk.

But the good times did not last long. The advantages it advertised had already been realized by software such as WeChat, QQ, and DingTalk. Fetion, which lacked core competitiveness, was eventually abandoned by the tide of the times.

3.Write at the end

All we can say is that China Mobile had good intentions in launching Fetion, but during the development process, perhaps it was the chaos in China Mobile's internal structure, perhaps it was the blind confidence brought about by success, or perhaps it was the attitude of being content with the status quo that led to its current demise.

But it is precisely because of Fetion's exploration of instant messaging tools that it provided direction for the development of subsequent communication tools. This may be the meaning of "those who plant trees will enjoy the shade."

Fetion is like a microcosm of the development of the Internet. No company can be the strongest forever. Only by continuous optimization and innovation can it retain users. ​